GOP Split on What’s Next for Newt When Dole Exits

WASHINGTON —  With Sen. Bob Dole’s departure from the congressional leadership getting closer, Republicans are feeling a new sense of urgency on a question that has bedeviled them for months.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich: Should he speak up or shut up?

After months of deference to Dole, the Republican Party confronts a power vacuum on Capitol Hill. How party leaders think that vacuum should be filled is something of a Rorschach test for their view of what’s wrong with the GOP.

Some Republicans, who are worried that Dole’s presidential campaign and the GOP legislative strategy have been foundering, see Gingrich (R-Ga.) as the party’s salvation. They have begged him to resume a more active role in leading and speaking for the party.

Others, fearing the party has suffered from Gingrich’s fiery conservative rhetoric and his love of controversy, think the speaker is part of the problem. They have pleaded with him to cool his jets and devote his energy to repairing the public relations damage done by a year of ethics charges and personal and political missteps.

For his part, Gingrich is unrepentant in his assessment of why Republicans have lost so much political ground over the last year. He blames it not on any miscalculation by the Republicans, but on President Clinton, whom he accuses of misleading the public about the GOP agenda; on the media, which he accuses of systematic bias in favor of Clinton; and on the heavy barrage of political advertising from the Democratic Party and organized labor.

“You have $60 million of advertising, you have the prestige of the presidency in falsehoods,” Gingrich said recently on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press.” “The White House press corps never calls him on it.”

He has also turned his fire on fellow Republicans who have gone public with their anxieties about the state of the GOP. “My advice to everybody who is anxiety-ridden is to go out and do something for the party,” he told the Washington Times recently. “Go out and raise your own money.”

Gingrich sees himself as the victim of relentless, misleading attacks by Democrats, and recently conceded that they have taken their toll. But that hasn’t stopped him from jumping back into a steady stream of media events--attacking Clinton on welfare here, on the minimum wage there, positioning himself as point man in the GOP battle against what he calls the “White House propaganda machine.”

But the GOP ambivalence about Gingrich’s role is a measure of how much has changed--both for the speaker and for the party as a whole--over the last year.

In spring of 1995, Gingrich was a larger-than-life political figure, towering over the Capitol after his triumphant first 100 days of rapid-fire legislative action. Now his disapproval ratings have spiked up to 58%, and he has been fighting defensive battles on a minimum-wage increase and other issues.

Last June, Gingrich was flirting with a run for the presidency. He took a campaign-style tour around New Hampshire, complete with helicopter travel, motorcades and adoring crowds. Now he has been relegated to the role of junior partner to Dole.

What happened in the interim was a series of sharp reversals for Gingrich. First, Clinton began to gain ground as many Americans began to see him as a necessary brake on Republican proposals that seemed, in the favorite word of administration officials, “extreme.” Then voters blamed Republicans for a series of highly unpopular government shutdowns. Finally, Clinton’s popularity rose still further after his State of the Union speech.

“I don’t think there’s any question that Newt got rattled when we ran up against the brick wall at the White House,” said one Republican close to Gingrich. “By February he was having doubts about the agenda.”

With all that, the shadows of obscurity looked pretty inviting. Gingrich began ducking invitations to appear on national television talk shows. He handed more control over the day-to-day operation of the House to his lieutenants. And he plunged into a period of introspection to retool his political strategy in the wake of the budget battle that left the GOP agenda a shambles.

Now, while Gingrich seems to have resolved his own doubts and has begun once again increasing his public appearances, he is, if anything, even more controversial.

In response, the speaker seems to be taking some steps to smooth the rough edges off his own image. A longtime animal lover, he has appeared with a snake on CNN’s “Larry King Live” and with piglets on NBC-TV’s “Tonight Show.” On policy matters, he has acceded to a more moderate budget than Republicans pushed last year, and he was more willing than his lieutenants to allow a vote on increasing the minimum wage.

But he still presents the party with a fascinating dilemma. With the GOP fielding a presidential candidate whose Midwestern tones and staccato syntax often seem an invitation to change channels, Gingrich has the stature and pizazz to grab the attention of a sleepy electorate. The problem is, the attention is not always flattering.

The most compelling champion of the GOP revolution, Gingrich has also become a vivid symbol of its excesses. His colorful anti-union, anti-establishment flourishes might be music to voters in the country’s most conservative regions, but it is like nails on a chalkboard to many moderate Republicans and swing voters.

“The guys in Salt Lake City like him, but I don’t think the guys from White Plains [N.Y.] do,” said Tom Korologos, a Washington lobbyist who is a Dole confidant. “What are you supposed to do, muzzle him?”

Some Republicans are so nervous about their party’s performance that they say it is worth the risk of sending Gingrich out for a Hail Mary pass.

“What’s the alternative?” asked an April editorial in the Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine. “Today we see the costs of Gingrich’s withdrawal from the national debate: Clinton getting a free ride, the Republican agenda on the Hill in stasis and . . . bickering among conservatives rather than renewed assaults on the liberal welfare state.”

Others beg to differ. Some Republicans cringed when, at Dole’s resignation speech, Gingrich stood right behind the senator peering into the dozens of cameras capturing the image that appeared in newscasts and on front pages around the country.

“He needs to just recede and win his race in Georgia,” said a senior Republican operative.

But that same operative doubts that Gingrich will accept such advice. “He is incapable of it.”